No Fear
by themostdarkestheart
Summary: When Kiryu sees this little girl, he cannot believe that he really wants to talk to her. She has a mask in her hand and cries. Who is it, and why do tears keep falling on her cheeks? - Kiryu x ... you will see. :


**No Fear **

* * *

_He didn't know where he was and what to do now. Only darkness was around him but he was also used to it because the last years of his life had been whole of it. From the time of his arrest, until the time to his execution and even after that, when he has been awoken as a Dark Signer only to get an opportunity for revenge. _

But he didn't really need the light.

Bored and with the question of what he should do, he turned round and searched for a way back.

How he came into this forest he didn't know, even though he did wonder how it could be that the forest seemed so unnatural.

He was in the background and could see a little girl running. She ran away panting and looked around desperately, not knowing where to go or what to do, as if there was nothing more for her.

He remarked that she held a mask in her left hand. And when she stopped and he approached her with a couple of steps, he could hear her crying quietly. He could see how she tried to wipe the tears off her cheeks with her right hand, what, however, seemed to be a senseless venture. She couldn't dry her damp cheeks since more tears kept falling.

A strange feeling had taken possession of him. He couldn't say what it was but he knew that he suddenly had a desire to go to the girl and to talk with her.

"Why do you cry?", he asked her in a deep gentle voice when he stepped to her and stopped directly in front of her. The girl first didn't react at all as if she wouldn't have heard him or as if she ignored him. This in turn irritated Kiryu and may be the reason why he doesn't like children much. He sighed when he intended to practice patience and he asked the girl once again.

"Why do you cry, little one?"

The girl looked astonishedly in the face of the man in front of her and suddenly stopped sobbing. She cast a mistrustful look at him before she answered him: "This is nothing of your concern." Kiryu rolled his eyes,felt that he might be at the wrong place, but noticed that the girl seemed to be different than other children in her age. Something seemed to torment her even if he couldn't say yet what.

He leant down to her so that they could see themselves directly in their eyes. The girl looked up surprised when she saw that he had leant to her and could look in her tear-swollen face. Didn't this man know whoever he was, how frightening she really was?

"Go away! Leave me alone!! ", she yelled and cried new tears again. "Not before I don't know what is wrong with you", he replied with a quiet voice which made the girl stop.

"Aren't you afraid of me?"

"No, why should I?"

"Because I am a monster."

"Huh? A monster?"

"Yes. I let others suffer by my abilities. I hurt them with my abilities."

The girl could look him into the eyes no more when she had reached the point which caused her the most problems. It hurt her to look into the eyes of somebody who in turn would begin to hate her sooner or later. Nobody liked her and nobody would ever take her how she is - especially not a stranger like him.

"So what?"

The eyes of the girl narrowed when she heard this, and she looked him again in the face on which a smile stood out now.

"It doesn't... disturb you?", she asked doubtingly.

"Why should it? Doesn't each of us have anything that he doesn't like about himself?"

The girl was silent, astonished of the fact that he didn't seem to be afraid of her at all. Kiryu looked at her more exactly, when she said nothing and as she followed his look, she noticed that he got stuck with the mask which she carried in her hand.

"What do you have in your hand there?"

"Oh this? This... is my mask."

"Mask? Why does a little girl as you need a mask for?"

"To hide my true self. So that no-one sees it, so that no-one knows what I am in reality."

"So you hide? Such a little girl like you doesn't need this actually."

"But I am dangerous. It is better if I don't show my real face. My real face has made everyone around me suffer. Nobody likes my real face. Why should I show it to them?"

Lost in thought she took her mask and looked at it with a sad face. Kiryu looked confused, but he could comprehend in a certain way what the little girl in front of him wanted to say. She had fear, was afraid of her abilities and her true self. A personality, which, as young as she was, has already loaded herself with sin. So similar to his, because he also couldn't be carefree any more. He suffered under what he was and how he has become to that and in his own desperation he had sworn revenge. But how much of him could he really compare with the girl in front of him? This was something he didn't know. But he knew how it was like to isolate oneself and he knew the pain that came from this retreat.

And, as much as he didn't like children, it seemed wrong, so wrong, that a little girl like this had to hide so much.

"I like your face."

She looked at him astonishedly.

"You like ... my face?"

"Yes", he nodded, " you look sweet. You don't have to hide. You have shown me your real face, right? You don't wear the mask now at all. So I could look into your real face. I see your tears. I see your sorrow. You look beautiful with these tears in your face."

The girl looked at him even more surprised, but then a gentle smile stood out on her face for the first time when she heard this certain compliment. She looked beautiful. For the first time someone had told her that she looked beautiful. For the first time someone has said that he likes her face and it had been the stranger of whom she had thought that he would sentence her just the same as all other ones did before. She blushed in her face, as she smiled and whispered softly:

"Th... thanks..."

"hm, for what?"

"Thank you for being able to look me into my face without hating me. That you find my face beautiful."

"Oh, little one, if only you had more confidence in yourself, then more people would be able find your face beautiful."

"But how can I trust myself ... if I don't like myself ..."

"You suffer, therefore you don't like yourself. I however ... seem to like you already. This is a beginning anyway, right? If you have found someone who likes you like you are, with the face that you show him, then this is good. Sometime, perhaps you will begin to like yourself."

"How shall this be possible?", the little girl asked doubtingly but Kiryu twitched only with the shoulders.

"I don't know this. I ... don't like myself anyway either."

Kiryu winced now and looked away when he had said this truth. Yes, he didn't like himself too, the person that he was now - just because of this he knew how it was for the girl to hate herself.

Unnoticed he felt how hot tears began to stream down his face, and before he was consciously aware what it was that fell down on his cheeks, he could feel warm hands touch his face. He winced in this sudden warmth and could hear a hitting muffledly.

He then looked the little girl into the face who kept her hands on his cheeks. She had dropped her mask apparently to comfort him and to show him that she did care for him even if they don't know each other at all. She wiped away the tears of his cheeks and he also took his hands to clumsyly wipe her still wet cheeks dry. She simply let it happen when she then asked with a shy voice:

"Are you well?"

"Yes ... it is okay."

"Why have you cried?"

"I ..."

Kiryu didn't know what he should say because a new feeling came up in him. Shame. He was ashamed to have shown such a weakness nearby the girl but still... he didn't know why, but something at this girl made him open up to her so very easily and the could disclose what he had kept secret even from himself. Maybe it was because he knew that the girl suffered too. She didn't love herself, like him. She was afraid of herself, like him. She wanted release - like him.

And he knew suddenly that he also had nothing to hide from her because she had already seen his real face, too.

"Because I don't love myself either and also must hide my face, even if it is underneath a cloak and not behind a mask like you do."

The little girl saw on the ground briefly where her mask lay and then turned to the stranger again.

"Then... do you feel just like me?"

"What? Yes ... yes, one can say it so."

"You are also a monster?"

She didn't ask him reproachfully at all, rather with the voice of a curious child which really wanted to know something and she still hold his face in her hands.

"Yes."

"Then ... does it mean that I am not alone?", she asked full of hope.

Kiryu nodded only dumbly and wondered how stupid this little girl could be, how naive to think that only she felt so alone in this world.

"You are not alone", he said, " there are many people who feel just like us. We ..." And he said that what he realized now.

"We only find someone else so seldom, someone to share our pain with, because we all wear masks, because we all hide our face in fear that someone could hurt us. We are afraid to show each other our real face because we fear that we could hate each other."

"But we ... we have shown each other our true face, right?", the girl asked only quietly and Kiryu nodded. "Yes, we have."

The little girl looked at him with big eyes and began to twitch when Kiryu looked down and stared at her with his dark black eyes. Tears ran down the cheeks of the girl again, when it opened his eyes once more, before taking her hands off his face to hug him.

Kiryu didn't know how he should behave when the little girl sobbed in his embrace but she suddenly stopped and sighed quietly, as she cuddled up to him. Confused at what the funny noises of her could mean, he asked her:

"What is? Why have you cried?"

She mopped her tears of the cheeks and was capable of showing him her first right laughter now.

"I was only happy to have found somebody who feels just like me."

Kiryu felt heat climb up his face and couldn't stop looking at this beautiful smile in her face.

"I am only happy to know that I am not the only one who feels like that, that I am not alone. And that we both have shown ourselves our real face."

He only looked at her and listened dumbly for what she had to say.

"Aren't you afraid of my face ? Of the black eyes that I have? Don't they look terrible?", he asked.

But she only shook her head.

"No, I am not afraid. You look beautiful with it, particularly with the ice blue hair which falls into your face and the pale white skin. Like a marble doll. Simply beautiful."

She jumped away off him and turned some circles like for a dance before she stopped in some distance and looked at him, smiling.

"I must go home now."

This woke him of his numbness.

"Home? Wait, you have forgotten your mask!"

"I don't need it any more. Now that I know that there is someone who knows how I feel I don't need it any more."

She approached him with a few steps.

"But before I go, I still would like to know what you are called."

"I ... I am Kiryu Kyosuke, and you?"

The girl giggled briefly, whispered his name softly and answered him after that:

"so, Kiryu Kyosuke? And I ... my name is ... I am Aki. Aki Izayoi."


End file.
